+ Interview: Intermodal Shipping & Maersk Line - Part III

Refrigerators, Ports, and the Overall Picture

This is third and final part of our look at the energy issues that the world’s largest container shipping company, MaerskLine, deals with, through the insight of Lee Kindberg, Environmental Director for Maersk’s North American Operations. You can check out parts one and two at
http://www.thegreenergrass.org/2008/01/interview-intermodal-shipping-maersk.html and
http://www.thegreenergrass.org/2008/01/interview-intermodal-shipping-maersk_17.html

Refrigeration

I like oranges, and noticed a few years back that a lot of oranges at my local supermarkets were from South Africa and Australia. You mentioned that refrigeration is important to Intermodal shipping; can you tell me more about that?

“You can fit a lot of oranges in a container! A fair number of the containers on board any one of those ships might contain produce such as say grapes from Chile, and those have to be kept at a very constant temperature, so they’re shipped in refrigerated containers which we call reefers. [A name also applied to ice-filled rail cars a hundred years ago]. Those containers have monitors on them and are kept on very tight control, because a very small change in temperature can result in moldy fruit, or damage to electronics. Electronics are often shipped in temperature controlled containers; you wouldn’t want them to get very hot in the middle of the summer for example, and the sealed containers are more humidity controlled.

Refrigerated containers use about 30% more energy than a standard container if you look at the total carbon footprint. When we take them off the ship and put them on the ground or on a [truck or rail] chassis, we actually plug them in. When we’re ready to put them on a truck or train, we mount a small diesel generator “genset” on them that runs the refrigeration unit.”

Food and transportation is an interesting topic I’ll be looking into more, because I like oranges, bananas, sushi, and other food items we don’t harvest anywhere near Cincinnati. A New York Times article suggests that given the relative efficiency of transporting food by container ships and rail, non-locally grown produce can actually be as “green” or even “greener” than locally grown. Check it out at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/business/yourmoney/09feed.html

A Better Refrigerator!

At your website, I read a little about the QUEST program Maersk initiated along with the Dutch government to cut the energy demands of these refrigerated containers, what else can you say about that?

“The QUEST (Quality and Energy Efficiency in Storage and Transport) program was developed as a way to control the temperature of the goods instead of the air inside the container. By coming up with these finer controls we’re able to greatly reduce the energy required to operate those units. I believe last year we put several thousand new units into service with that type of controls. QUEST is a new approach based on thinking about what are you trying to achieve. It’s about trying to keep the cargo at a constant temperature instead of keeping the air at a constant temperature. There are also some improvements in the mechanisms and the insulation, so multiple parts make up the large total improvement.”

When fully implemented in 2008, the program is projected to reduce CO2 emissions by 325,000 tons per year. Again, I found that the economies of scale that Maersk operates at gives them the resources to make some significant advances in energy efficiency that might have applications elsewhere. Perhaps the local supermarket or your own refrigerator could benefit from the same technology.


Carbon Footprint Calculator

Our discussion about refrigeration reminded me that total carbon footprint and energy efficiency is complex, involving many factors, since most goods must travel by multiple modes to get to your home or business. I read that Maersk has deployed a Carbon Footprint Calculator service they provide for clients. Can I get some more information or a test case from this program?

“We have our new carbon-check calculator that allows us to help our customers calculate their total carbon footprint for transportation. It uses published data for air, truck, and rail, and our specific data for our ships. It allows us to calculate and compare two routes, or go all the way from the loading dock in China all the way to your local retail outlet. It allows you to optimize the route to take for each step, and can look at how each piece contributes to the total. We just rolled it out so it’s still proprietary, but the EPA in its SmartWay program has tools you can use to do land transportation calculations. Also the Clean Cargo Working Group of BSR has developed transportation calculators for both ocean freight and intermodal shipping.” (You can check that out at: http://www.epa.gov/smartway/ and http://www.bsr.org)


Efficiency & Safety Go Together

You’ve noted a couple of times how intermodal shipping has reduced the manpower needed, how efficient everything’s become compared to the old days when there might be hundreds of people on the docks loading and unloading cargo. It seems like there’s something else you wanted to say about that:

“Containerization has been part of what’s made that possible, but that also means fewer people who might get injured doing some of these very difficult cargo handling jobs. So we’ve worked to improve both safety and efficiency. In our new Port terminal in Virginia, we have a computer controlled storage area no people are needed in, which is a big safety plus.”

Dr. Kindberg was talking about the innovative Maersk operation that addresses these dual goals of safety and energy efficiency, the newly commissioned APM Intermodal terminal at Portsmouth, Virginia. APM Terminals is another Maersk division that operates over 50 intermodal terminals around the world. If you’re interested you can learn more at http://www.apmterminals.com/. APMT Virginia takes advantage of a number safety, pollution reduction, and energy-saving technologies, including hybrid lift cranes that store energy when lowering containers to re-use when lifting them.

A World of Energy Issues

I’ve learned what an integrated company Maersk is, having the ships, containers, terminals, and a technical division that helps design everything. Because everything is so vertically integrated, does that make it easier to choose the right options, because the right thing to do is probably the thing that makes the whole system more efficient?

“Maersk companies also include total logistics management, trucking, warehousing, shipyards, and a company that builds containers. It is a highly integrated company. While these are different divisions, we try to think about the whole transportation chain. Sometimes the biggest improvements are not in one particular little area, but those that work best across the whole chain, whether you’re talking safety, the environment, or efficiency. You have to look at the total transportation chain.”

It sounds like overall you have quite a wide ranging job. You’re covering both the local air quality situation, and global efficiency & CO2 issues, and everything in between. That’s a lot of responsibility!

“Well, it’s very interesting to say the least. And it’s gratifying when we can make a difference, like what we’re doing with our fuel switch on the West Coast, and what we’re doing to improve energy efficiency on the ships and refrigerated containers.”


Thanks to Dr. Kindberg, I have much better feel for the energy and environmental issues around shipping those oranges or computers, and about some unique efficiency improvements Maersk Line has helped develop that should help reduce the impact of global trade.